Riding Shotgun With Google Street View's Revolutionary Camera

The 11-lens, softball-size, video game-style gadget that had privacy advocates shifting in their seats turns out to be changing how users interact with video and the commercial realms. Now it's got everyone from the military to the NBA ready to remap the world, and we get hands-on in a PM exclusive.

For the past seven months, Kevin Nanzer has been on the road almost nonstop, living in and out of motel rooms and corporate apartments. He's crisscrossed the country, living for weeks at a time in cities like Austin, Texas, Oklahoma City, Okla., Raleigh, N.C., and Albany, N.Y.

Nanzer, 23, is a geoimmersive data producer for Immersive Media, a Canadian company that specializes in the fast-growing world of "spherical video"—aka mapping the world for Google and beyond. For 5 hours each day (the most he can film because of the sun's angle to the Earth), Nanzer and a co-worker drive anywhere from 80 to 200 miles through a major city, capturing video and location data of every single street, bridge and highway.

"By the end, you'll get to know the city better than the one you grew up in," he says. "You can call me if you're lost in Oklahoma City, and I can tell you how to get somewhere. I know all the streets."

On this particular day, I'm sitting shotgun with Nanzer for a sneak peak at the 360-degree, roof-mounted data collection for topography 2.0. He typically wouldn't shoot footage on a rainy Manhattan day like this, because raindrops obscure the camera's 11 image-sensing lenses. And while the several blocks we covered looked as crystal clear as they do on the Google site (click here to play around with our test-drive footage), I'm not sure I could have taken it much longer anyway: Immersive uses a Volkswagen Beetle because of its small footprint and low ride, but that makes for one hell of a cramped trip. With all the equipment in the backseat, this tricked-out Bug fits just two people up front, where a laptop already takes up most of the dash on the passenger side, leaving me barely enough room to turn on and hold my camcorder steady.

By far the company's most recognizable client, Google, uses screen shots of Immersive's video footage for Google Maps Street View, a Web application that adds a level of interaction beyond the landmarks and driving directions that accompany most online maps. Users can zoom in on New York City, for example, to view panoramic shots of everything from Times Square and ground zero to their favorite restaurants and bars. The savviest users can even make out people and faces in some of these photos—an aspect that has generated heated debate among privacy advocates.

This interactivity, however, will only increase over time. One day, users might be able to go beyond snapshots to cars whizzing by along the Golden Gate Bridge or runners training for a marathon in Central Park. Strapped up with a virtual reality-style headset a few weeks earlier, I moved my head around a Humvee to see a moving battlefield simulation—evidence of Immersive's full-motion video capabilities that, with some effort, can even stream live footage.

Advances at Immersive and other mapping startups are quickly changing the basic relationship between filmmakers and photographers and their audiences. Rather than present a specific perspective to viewers, Immersive's equipment puts them in an environment where they can freely explore. Petroleum engineers can watch aerial footage of pipelines from the comfort of offices rather than pile into expensive helicopters. In scenarios such as this, viewers gain back control of what they can and cannot watch.

"There's more to life than where the camera operator tells you where to see," says Tom McGovern, director of federal programs for Immersive Media. "And the more people use [the technology], the more they'll expect it."

At the heart of Immersive's services for Google and a number of other contractors is the Dodeca 2360, a softball-size camera that records from nearly a dozen different angles at 30 frames per second. Later, photos can be extracted and stitched together to form pictures with a resolution of 2400 by 1200 pixel—a frame "bigger than any high-definition image," says its inventor and chief technology officer, David McCutchen.

But at $45,000 for the camera, twice that with mounts and a base unit that processes images in real time, plus anywhere from $125 to $700 per mile of video footage, the rig doesn't come cheap. That's probably why just six two-man teams make up Immersive's geodata services, using an off-the-shelf Logitech video-game controller to operate the camera, which is mounted above each VW—not that they haven't hoisted it on backpacks for shots of the Grand Canyon and the Everglades.

So far Immersive's cameras have logged more than 50,000 miles across the United States, providing Google with most of the images for cities that offer Street View (the Web giant did San Francisco, for example, in-house). "Our goal with Street View is to provide users with a rich, immersive browsing experience," insists Megan Quinn, a Google spokesperson. Going forward, the Google Maps team hopes to make the new feature available in as many cities as possible. "Our users have told us that this ability to view a location as if they were actually there helps them better understand and find information about places they live and visit," Quinn continues.

But the Dodeca 2360 has been used elsewhere. One unit went underwater to survey coral reefs in Fiji for the Planetary Coral Reef Foundation. For George Bush's 2001 inauguration, the U.S. Capitol Police took it for security alongside the presidential motorcade. Adidas recently used one to follow David Beckham's soccer debut in Los Angeles, and the U.S. Army used the camera on a new tactical truck.

While Immersive is ahead of the field with its tech and early commercial success, it's far from the only company collecting video and positioning data. Similar mapping outfits like Tele Atlas use custom vans to collect petabytes (that's a million gigabytes) of geospatial information about cities for navigational purposes, but only one or two companies also record video of locations. "People are seeing the value of it," says Edward Jurkevics, a geospatial businesses analyst for Chesapeake Analytics. "And the space is heating up."

Microsoft and Google, with their respective mapping applications, might eventually want to reconstruct whole 3D worlds where users can walk into highly detailed rooms or even retail shops. A company could go into these worlds and update its virtual street signs or storefronts, Jurkevics says. "The `wow' is going to be when you can actually go on the Internet, pick which building you're going to and do a virtual drive-by," he promises. "It's going to be revolutionary in the way we do business."

From Hollywood marketing to military training, the potential for spherical video and geodata maps is only increasing. Immersive, after inking deals with Adidas and the NBA to offer promotional Web videos, is now banking on the appeal of 360-degree exploration in more commercial fields. "We're trying to drive consumer behavior through experiential marketing," Immersive's McGovern says. "There might be a significant event happening, like a concert or a sports event, and instead of just a snippet or picture of it, we can extend the experience by capturing it in an immersive camera and sharing that with people after the event."